1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for removing dead poultry from a poultry house, and more particularly, to such a method and apparatus that reduces the amount of time and effort required to remove dead poultry from the poultry house.
2. Background of the Invention
The commercial poultry industry typically raises a large number of birds, for example, chickens, turkeys or the like, in huge building or poultry houses which are often times 400 in length, each house being capable of containing up to 30,000 birds. The birds are raised in the poultry house from the time they are hatchlings and spend their entire growing period within the enclosure of the building before being collected, crated and sold to market, once they reach the desired size and age.
Raising poultry such as chickens or turkeys is a labor intensive operation requiring constant care of the birds and their needs. Traditionally, chickens or other poultry have been fed by the farmer using a feed cart supported on an overhead rail to transport feed through the poultry house. The cart is manually rolled along the rail by the farmer to the various feed stations situated throughout the house while feed is shoveled from the cart into floor level, flat feed trays for young birds and into bowls for older poultry. The young chicks require flat feed trays because they are not tall enough to reach into the feed bowls. Automated feeding arrangements are also known wherein feed is conveyed via feed lines that extend from a central hopper outside the house to feed receptacles distributed throughout the poultry house.
In order to assure the mobility of the diminutive sized hatchlings and young chicks within the poultry house so that they can get adequate access to food and water, nothing is situated on the poultry house floor of the poultry house other than the feed bowls for the older birds. As a result, everything in the poultry house, such as the water lines, feed lines and the like, are suspended by wires from hangers which makes it difficult for the farmer to move freely throughout the poultry house or traverse the width of the poultry house. To minimize the obstructions caused by this situation, the suspend items are typically arranged parallel to the longitudinal axis of the poultry house to form unobstructed lanes so that the farmer must walk lengthwise through the house to get around.
Bird mortality is generally low during the early part of their life when they are relatively small, but increases as the birds get older and bigger. In order to maintain the general good health of the birds, the carcasses of the dead birds must be regularly and periodically removed from the poultry house. When the birds are young and small, the task of removing the dead birds is relatively easy because the mortality rate is fairly low and the size and weight of the birds is small.
During this period of the birds' growth cycle, a single bucket is sufficient to contain all the dead birds that are collected from the poultry house by the farmer during the periodic removal operations. The bird carcasses are then manually carried out of the poultry house in the single bucket and disposed of. This process typically requires the farmer to handle each bird carcass only once, i.e., when they are placed in the bucket.
However, as the birds get older, the mortality rate increases and as a result, there are more carcasses to be removed. In addition, the birds are bigger in size and weight. A single bucket is no longer sufficient to contain all the dead birds collected during a single, periodic removal session. As a result, the operation of removing the older birds is exceedingly difficult becoming one of the most labor intensive operations of poultry farming. Due to the increased size of the dead bird carcasses, the farmer collects the carcasses until the bucket is full and then piles the bucket of collected carcasses at strategic locations throughout the poultry house. Then each pile of dead birds is picked up and hand carried from the poultry house.
It is not uncommon for each pile of bird carcasses to comprise several full buckets of dead birds and to have numerous piles of carcasses scattered throughout the poultry house. As a result, the farmer is handling each of the bird carcasses at least three times; once upon placement into the bucket, then again when they are placed in the pile and a further time when they are picked up from the pile and removed from the poultry house.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,638 to Sappington et al., which relates to a poultry feeder apparatus comprising a feed hopper suspended on an overhead rail by motor driven trolley wheels, Sappington et al. disclose the provision of a convenience receptacle mounted on the feed hopper for storing dead chicken or debris located by the farmer during feeding. As best seen in FIG. 1 of the '638 patent, the convenience receptacle comprises a bucket of a relatively small size inconveniently located on one side of the feed hopper. As a result, the bucket can be loaded from only one side of the hopper and due to it's diminutive size is not capable of containing all the dead poultry found during a single removal operation once the poultry grows older and bigger. This arrangement of conveying poultry carcasses therefore fails to solve the problem of reducing the number of times the farmer has to handle the poultry during a removal session and suffers from the same drawbacks of the manual method of removal.
It is also known to convey live poultry from fenced in collection areas within the poultry house to a truck using a motorized conveyor belt such as disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,201,156 to Kahler. However, the Kahler invention is not adapted for nor does the patent disclose or suggest using this arrangement for removing dead poultry which are scattered randomly throughout the poultry house. Moreover, Kahler's device requires extensive and therefore labor intensive set-up within the poultry house before it can be used. In addition, the device must then be removed once the operation of transporting the live poultry out of the poultry house is complete in order to allow the farmer and/or poultry to move freely throughout the poultry house. As a result, Kahler's device's set-up and removal requirements are to labor intensive for practical use during the numerous poultry carcass removal operations that must be performed by the poultry farmer as the poultry grow to their harvest size.